How deprivation affects life expectancy in France and Italy: comparative evidence from a factorial analysis

The paper intends to investigate how some elements of material and social deprivation affect standard of living and life expectancy in the Italian and French regions. The factorial analysis has been used to choose the deprivation variables, which were utilised to create two distinct condition indexes referring to material and social, respectively. The index of the social and material condition (SMCI) consists of the sum of the two indices. Our choice of putting together Italy and France is due to the comparable history, culture, institutions of both countries and the structure of their economies, as several authors maintain and the Governor of the Bank of Italy has remarked recently (May 2011) in his report on the Italian economy, citing social and economic indicators.